Mumbai gangrape: All 5 suspects arrested

Mumbai: All five men who gang-raped a 22-year-old photojournalist and beat her colleague in Mumbai last evening, in an incident chillingly similar to the Delhi gangrape, have been arrested.

The attackers are believed to be local men who used to hang around the deserted Shakti Mills complex in south Mumbai, where they raped the girl.

Hours after releasing sketches of the five suspects, drawn up late last night based on details given by the girl and her colleague, the police said they had identified the men.

The police say the girl and her colleague entered the abandoned Shakti Mills complex at around 6 pm. The girl wanted to take photographs for an assignment.

Two of the men accosted the couple and asked them to take permission from the mill supervisor, trying to draw them further inside. They soon started passing lewd comments. When the girl and her friend objected, the men attacked them. They beat the colleague and tied him up with a belt before dragging the girl inside the decrepit building.

The two men reportedly called three more and they all took turns to rape the girl. The police say they might have fled in a train from the adjoining Mahalakshmi train station. The girl came to almost two hours later.

At least two of them could be drug addicts.

Mumbai Commissioner of Police Satyapal Singh told NDTV: "One of the suspects was smoking, and from the way the girl and her friend described another man, he seems to be a drug addict."

Shockingly for a city known to be comparatively safer for women, the incident took place between 6 and 8 pm, when there was still some daylight, revealing the sheer audacity of the crime committed in peak hours, right next to a crowded station.